"12 Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; 2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, 3 in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed,4 and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— 5 they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— 6 before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, 7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. 8 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.
9 Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. 10 The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgement, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."
Ecclesiastes 12:1-14
The 'evil days' mentioned in 1 are, it seems clear from what follows in 3-7, those of feeble, helpless old age, perceptibly marking the failure of bodily and mental strength. They are described in these later verses as the years of which one has to say, 'I have no pleasure in them'. Delitzsch thinks that the attempts made by commentators to interpret the allegorical references have been for the most part unfortunate. Reading too much detail into allegory is an occupational hazard for commentators - as witness the often arbitrary assertions made in the interpretation of prophetic literature - but it is surely legitimate to see a general picture of old age in these verses, with the faculties of body and mind steadily deteriorating until elderly folk become the merest shadow of what they once were, before finally going to their 'long home'. The end of life is spoken of first in terms of the silver cord suspending a lamp from the ceiling being loosed and the golden bowl containing the oil falling and being shattered, and then in terms of the pitcher being broken at the fountain, and the wheel bringing up the water container being broken at the well. It is a mistake, in our view, to read more literal detail into these word pictures than the poetic and allegorical nature of the writing warrants (just as it destroys the beauty of, say, Wordsworth's poetry - clouds are not really lonely, and daffodils do not really dance, and it does not help our understanding and appreciation of his delightful poem to think they do). But the truth with which the allegory closes in 7 is not in dispute, and death does mean a reckoning with God. And if we are not rightly related to Him, then all is vanity indeed.